Yesterday at Brisbane Road was not the happiest of experiences known to Glovers fans. For the privilege of £25.00, we congregated at Leyton Orient on the sort of outdated uncomfortable wooden seating that most would suppose had been cut out of football grounds 30 years ago - or at least where you would hope that special cheaper pricing would be in force to recognise what you were getting for your money.

These are the same prices that we were paying last season, so in fairness we should know what to expect by now, but it is a clear rip-off, and it's little surprise to find that as Orient's admission prices went sharply upwards (25 percent in two years for last year's prices) their crowds have slid downwards. The 2,876 crowd was certainly sparse, but with the ability to watch Champions League on the telly for free, could you blame anyone for staying at home?

A large proportion of the 191 travelling Yeovil supporters probably also wished that they'd stayed at home, although for slightly different reasons. I found Gary Johnson's team selection to be unusual for a number of reasons. I could understand why he dropped Luke Ayling - he hadn't had a good game on Saturday at Milton Keynes Dons and taking him off was a brave but correct move at the time.

However, the addition of Dominic Blizzard as a right-back was an odd one, particularly as Korey Smith is the one of the midfielders who has played in that position before. Instead Smith partnered Ed Upson in the centre - to be fair, the Norwich City loanee had a reasonable game there, and I think he will add value to the team.

With Blizzard playing at right-back for the first time (to my knowledge) in his career, and Nathan Ralph's Football League experience of starting games having only begun two games ago, the decision to put a third rookie in Rohan Ince into that back line was an odd one, particularly as Richard Hinds was one of the better performers at stadium:mk in my eyes. The end result was that Byron Webster was the only member of the back four with genuine defensive experience - a far cry from the Ayling-Hinds-Webster-McAllister quartet that we've based the early season around. As such, although Gary has said that he wanted to send out a strong message to his players, I felt it was probably a step too far to have only one 'first choice' defender left in there.

By the time we'd got two and a half minutes into the game, my pre-match thoughts were reenforced somewhat by seeing Ben Chorley get a very soft opening goal into the back of the net. The back line seemed to have no idea on how to deal with crosses, corners, or Nathan Clarke's long throws that were so direct that they had to be defended as if they were corners. Orient seemed to quickly realise this was their most effective way to pressurise us. We know from Russell Slade's time at Huish Park, that one of his strengths is set pieces, and the directness of balls into the box, and we looked fragile throughout under this approach.

We actually weren't too bad once we got the ball ourselves, although still suffered from Saturday's malaise of giving the ball away cheaply. The home side's opener came from us losing the ball on the halfway line, which led to a corner, which led to a throw-in - putting the defence under unnecessary pressure, which led to the goal. A half time conversation about Keanu Marsh-Brown had recalled the winger giving the ball away just before the break, that launched another Orient counter-attack, and so his substitution wasn't too much of a surprise, even if Gary could have picked out two or three players who hadn't done themselves justice at all.

Whether it was that substitution, bringing on Gozie Ugwu, or whether it was Gary's half time 'chat', the first 20 minutes of the second half were very good. Sam Foley was one of our better players on the night, and danced his way down the left-flank in front of us on numerous occasions during this time. Thus he deserved his goal, moving in well to anticipate the work done on the opposite flank by Korey Smith. At that point, I honestly thought we had a chance of pulling the game out of the fire, just as we did last time, in coming back from 2-0 down to snatch a 2-2 draw. Orient were on the back foot, and we were threatening well.

Alas! I had forgotten about our fragile defending from earlier in the game. One rare Orient attack was all it took. A corner forced, and then a free run for Jimmy Smith to convert and despite the game looking like 2-1 might become the 2-2 draw we hoped for, instead we were on a 3-1 scoreline, and that was the moment the wind went out of our attacking comeback sails.

The fourth goal followed quickly after. Despite what some accused him of, I didn't see Russell Slade do much long-ball stuff whilst he was at Yeovil, but Kevin Lisbie's goal came straight from the 1980s. A goal kick, a simple flick-on, and a striker running through to fire home. From one end of the pitch to the other in around five seconds, and our defence left flat-footed not for the first time that night. At that point, it could have got seriously ugly with Orient having two or three more chances to add to the lead, and the home fans chanting "We want five". Mercifully they didn't get it, thanks to Marek Stech standing firm on a couple of one-on-ones.

On the back of three poor defeats, we now go into two very difficult looking fixtures against Sheffield United and Preston North End, and so Gary will have his work cut out in ensuring that three defeats doesn't turn into five. Certainly I would hope the first step would be to restore Jamie McAllister to the starting line-up for those games, even though Nathan Ralph has done OK in the matches where he has deputised. We need a bit more leadership and experience in the team to ensure that the youngsters don't lose their way - for that reason I'd like to see Richard Hinds restored as well, unless Gary's aware of something I'm not concerning his non-selection last night.

Thankfully we do have our strong start to fall back on - at the moment. The 10 points from 7 games ensures that we are in 11th place in the table, and being realistic, probably closer to where I think most fans expected/hoped we would be at the start of the season. What we must do though, is quickly stabilise that slippage down the table. There's a few jitters and nerves creeping into the way we play the game at present, and a strong result against one of our next two opponents would go a long way towards cutting that out.

There are no comments on this article yet. However, you are welcome to submit your own using the form below.

Submit Your Own Comments

Name :

E-Mail :

Notify Me When Comments Are Added To This Article?

NOTE: Your name will appear against your comment, but your email address will not be displayed. It is only required in case we need to contact you. It will not be distributed to anyone outside Ciderspace.